Medical School Diversity Essay: How to Write It + 3 Examples

What Is a Diversity Secondary Essay?

A diversity secondary essay asks you to explain how your background, experiences, characteristics, or perspective have shaped who you are and what you can contribute to a medical school community. Depending on the school's wording, the prompt may focus on your identity, the experiences that shaped your perspective, what you have learned from people different from you, or how you would contribute to an inclusive learning environment.

Diversity does not refer only to race, ethnicity, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or other demographic characteristics. Those can absolutely provide meaningful material, but so can socioeconomic background, growing up in a rural community, being a first-generation student, living with a disability or health challenge, military service, speaking multiple languages, pursuing a non-traditional career path, family responsibilities, athletics, or other experiences that substantially shaped your perspective.

For me, possible sources of material included my Mexican heritage, being fluent in Spanish, being the first in my family to pursue college and medicine, and being a collegiate athlete. The important point was not simply that these characteristics made me different. I needed to identify which experiences had actually shaped how I thought, behaved, related to others, or approached medicine.

That distinction matters. Almost everyone can identify something unusual or distinctive about their life, but not every distinctive fact makes a strong diversity essay topic. A strong topic gives you something specific to show, something meaningful to reflect on, and something relevant to the contribution the school is asking you to make.

What Are Medical Schools Looking for in a Diversity Essay?

The exact purpose depends on the prompt, but a strong response usually demonstrates three things:

1. Self-awareness: You understand how your background or experiences have shaped your perspective.
2. Reflection: You can explain what you learned, how you changed, or how the experience influences the way you approach other people and situations.
3. Contribution: You can show what that perspective will allow you to contribute to classmates, the school community, medicine, or future patients when the prompt asks you to make that connection.

This is why your essay should not simply list the characteristics that make you different. The admissions committee needs to understand what those experiences mean and why they matter.

How to Choose a Strong Diversity Secondary Essay Topic

A strong diversity essay topic is not simply the most unusual fact about you. Choose an experience, background, characteristic, or perspective that gives you something meaningful to show and explain.

Start by reviewing experiences you have already identified elsewhere in your application. Your AMCAS Work and Activities entries can be particularly useful because you have already considered which experiences mattered to your development.

When I brainstormed my own diversity essays, I could have drawn from my Mexican heritage, growing up in an immigrant household, being a first-generation college and medical student, living below the poverty line during much of my childhood, athletics, free-clinic work, teaching, volunteer work, or speaking Spanish. I did not need to include all of these. The goal was to choose the experience or perspective that best answered the specific prompt.

Use these four questions to evaluate a possible topic:

1. Is it personally meaningful? You should be able to explain why this experience or aspect of your background matters to you.
2. Can you show something concrete? Look for an event, decision, relationship, responsibility, or action rather than relying only on an identity label.
3. Did it shape you in a meaningful way? Your topic should help explain a perspective, skill, value, behavior, or way of relating to others that developed from the experience.
4. Can you explain your contribution? You should be able to connect what you learned to the contribution the school's prompt actually asks about.

You can also brainstorm by asking yourself:

• What experiences have changed how I understand people whose lives differ from mine?
• What responsibilities or circumstances shaped the way I approach school, work, community, or relationships?
• What part of my background has influenced the way I communicate, collaborate, solve problems, or support others?
• What would classmates understand differently because I was part of the class?

Avoid choosing a topic only because you think it sounds impressive. The strongest topic is usually the one you can discuss with the greatest specificity and insight.

If you're still deciding which experiences had the greatest impact on your development, reviewing your AMCAS most meaningful experiences can also help you distinguish a meaningful story from a merely impressive activity.

If you're applying through TMDSAS, the TMDSAS personal characteristics essay is a closely related prompt that also asks you to connect your personal qualities and experiences to what you can contribute.

How to Write a Diversity Secondary Essay Step-by-Step

Step 1: Identify Exactly What the Prompt Is Asking

Do not assume that all secondary essay prompts are asking the same question. One school may ask about your background, another about what you will contribute to the class, and another about what you learned from people whose experiences differ from your own.

Underline the actual task in the prompt before you begin writing. Your response should be built around that task, not around a generic diversity essay you prepared in advance.

Step 2: Choose One Central Experience or Idea

In most cases, one well-developed experience is more useful than a catalogue of everything that makes you different. If two experiences are closely connected and support the same central idea, you can use both, but they should still contribute to one coherent point.

Step 3: Show What Happened and What You Did

Give the reader enough concrete detail to understand the experience. Instead of simply saying that an experience taught you empathy, adaptability, cultural awareness, or perseverance, show what you encountered, how you responded, or what choices you made.

The experience itself should not consume the entire essay. It is evidence for the more important part: what the experience reveals about you.

Step 4: Explain What Changed or What You Learned

Reflection distinguishes a diversity essay from a résumé entry. Explain how the experience changed the way you think, communicate, work with others, make decisions, or understand a community.

Be precise. “I learned to appreciate diversity” says very little. A stronger explanation identifies the specific assumption you reconsidered, skill you developed, responsibility you took on, or perspective you gained.

Step 5: Explain What You Will Contribute

If the prompt asks what you will contribute to the medical school community, answer that directly. Explain how your perspective or experience would affect the way you participate as a classmate, collaborator, community member, or future physician.

Do not force every diversity essay into a statement about patient care. If the prompt asks about your contribution to classmates or the school's learning environment, answer that question. If it specifically asks about medicine or future patients, connect your experience to a concrete way you expect it to influence your behavior.

You can review the AAMC core competencies if you need a broader framework for thinking about the behaviors and qualities relevant to medical training, but your essay should still be grounded in your own experience rather than simply naming competencies.

Step 6: Tailor the Essay to the School's Exact Prompt

You can often reuse the same core experience across multiple secondary applications, but you should not submit the same essay unchanged. Adjust the emphasis, examples, conclusion, and contribution statement so that your response answers what each school actually asks.

For broader examples of how applicants approach other types of secondaries, see our medical school secondary essay examples.

Common Diversity Secondary Essay Mistakes

1. Treating an Identity Label as the Entire Answer

Naming your culture, socioeconomic background, disability, religion, geographic background, or another characteristic does not by itself explain what you will contribute. Show how that part of your life shaped your experiences or perspective.

2. Turning the Essay into an Adversity Essay

A difficult experience can absolutely be part of your diversity story, but a diversity essay and an adversity essay are not the same task. If the prompt asks about diversity or contribution rather than adversity, focus on the perspective or contribution that developed from the experience rather than assuming the essay needs to center on overcoming hardship.

3. Making Someone Else's Identity the Main Story

You may have learned a great deal from working with or becoming close to people whose backgrounds differ from yours. If you use that experience, keep the focus on your actions, learning, and development rather than presenting another person's identity as your own source of diversity.

4. Using Savior Language

Be careful when discussing volunteer work or service involving marginalized or underserved communities. Focus on what you actually did and learned without presenting yourself as the person who “saved” or transformed a community.

5. Relying on Generic Virtues

Statements such as “this taught me empathy” or “I learned that everyone is different” are too general unless you explain what specifically changed in your thinking or behavior.

6. Forcing a Connection to Medicine

Your essay should connect to medicine when the prompt requires it, but the connection should follow logically from your experience. Do not append a generic statement about becoming a compassionate physician to an essay that has not demonstrated that connection.

7. Reusing the Same Essay Without Answering the Prompt

Schools often ask related diversity questions in different ways. A strong core story can be reused, but your final response must answer the exact wording and emphasis of the individual prompt.

Want more tips and secondary essay examples? Watch this video!

Common Types of Diversity Secondary Essay Prompts

Medical schools phrase diversity questions in different ways, so do not assume that every prompt requires the same response. Most prompts fall into a few broad categories:

Background or Identity Prompts

These prompts ask how an important part of your background, identity, upbringing, or life experience has shaped you. Your response should explain the meaning of that experience rather than simply describe the characteristic itself.

Contribution Prompts

These prompts ask what you would bring to the medical school community, your classmates, the profession, or future patients. Your essay should connect your experience to a specific perspective, behavior, skill, or contribution.

Learning From Difference Prompts

These prompts ask you to reflect on an interaction or experience involving people, communities, or perspectives different from your own. Keep the focus on what you did, what you learned, and how the experience affected your thinking or behavior.

Some schools combine more than one of these approaches. Read the wording carefully and make sure your essay answers every part of the prompt.

If you want to review school-specific questions while planning your applications, see our complete guide to medical school secondary essay prompts.

Sample Diversity Secondary Essays

The examples below show three different ways an applicant can approach a diversity-related prompt: through cultural background, learning from someone with a different life experience, and contributing to diversity and inclusion. Do not copy their topics or conclusions. Instead, pay attention to how each response connects a specific experience to reflection and contribution.

Diversity Secondary Essay Sample #1

Prompt: “Diversity comes in many forms. How do you think you might contribute to the diversity of the class?” (1500 characters)

I am extremely fortunate to have a strong connection to my roots. Spending time in Italy throughout my life has allowed me to see how the ideology of this culture differs from that of the United States.

Italian society is often marred by the stereotype that its citizens are lazy or not willing to work. I believe that if people look through an objective lens, they will see a society that derives its happiness less from material objects and more from love and companionship. There is a monumental emphasis placed on the health and wellbeing of others. There is always time for a family meal, a coffee with a friend, or an evening walk to clear one’s mind. Growing up, my family always made sure everyone had enough to eat and someone to talk to. I believe in this philosophy and view the health care field as an opportunity to help others live a full and fruitful life pursuing their own happiness. My culture, upbringing, and life experiences have fostered my desire to pursue medicine and my holistic approach to life.

Throughout my life, health care professionals have consistently given my loved ones the ability to live autonomously and be present in my life. It is a service and a gift that they have given me and a gift I wish to spend my life giving to others. I will bring these elements of empathy and holistic care to not only as a training physician, but as a fellow classmate who is there for others through the rigors of medical school. (1,449 characters)

What this sample does well: The essay establishes a clear connection between the applicant's Italian family background and the values they associate with relationships, health, and community. It then carries those values forward into the applicant's anticipated contribution as a classmate and future physician, so the response does more than simply name a cultural identity.

What to learn from it: The strongest structure here is the flow from background to values to contribution. However, some claims about Italian society are broader than necessary. In your own essay, ground cultural observations in your family and lived experience rather than generalizing about an entire culture.

Diversity Secondary Essay Sample #2

Prompt: “The Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont recognizes that diversity extends beyond chosen and unchosen identities and encompasses the entirety of an individual’s experiences. Reflect on a time you learned something from someone or a group of people who are unlike yourself.”

In my freshman year of college, I roomed with an international student named Jorge who had immigrated from Guatemala to attend X University. We had a lot in common, despite our differences, and helped each other a lot in this transitional time in our lives. However hard adjusting to college life was for me as a first-generation citizen, I saw how much harder it was for him to transition to a new country and breach cultural barriers, while also acclimatizing to the responsibility and workload of a college student.

Instead of accepting the fact that our backgrounds rendered us incompatible, I decided to educate myself on his culture. I began reading about the political unrest in Guatemala, I found Latin Hip-Hop we could listen to, and I worked to develop my Spanish to try to make him feel at home. We grew very close and I learned a lot from being his roommate. Seeing his work ethic and commitment to building a life for himself inspired me to pursue my own goals with the same vigor. He looked at the opportunity to study in the United States as a privilege and didn’t take the chance to pursue his education for granted. We were roommates throughout college and in that time, I learned a lot culturally from him as well. Through our friendship, I spent time with his family and within the Latin community at X University and came to incorporate many aspects of his culture into my own life. I learned a lot about letting the people in my life know they are loved and taking the time in my day for simple pleasures like a good meal with friends. In return, I introduced him to my friends in the LGBTQ+ community on campus, where he forged more new friendships and found acceptance. I am very thankful for my friendship with Jorge and for the growth fostered by our friendship.

My experience with Jorge has made me particularly excited about the Larner College of Medicine, which I see as an institution invested in producing physicians who are culturally adept and equipped to treat all members of a patient population. The Larner College of Medicine’s commitment to improving health care for the LGBTQ+ population and investing in the wellbeing of its community speaks volumes about what this program values. My undergraduate and my own personal experiences as a first-generation citizen in this country have demonstrated for me how continuing to learn from others who are different is imperative, and how an enriching life comes from an open mind. (427 words)

What this sample does well: The response fits a prompt about learning from someone unlike yourself. It uses a sustained relationship rather than a one-time encounter, includes concrete actions the applicant took to understand and support their roommate, and reflects on how the friendship influenced the applicant's openness to other perspectives.

What to learn from it: When another person's background is central to your story, keep the essay focused on your own actions, reflection, and development. Avoid treating someone else's identity as evidence that you are diverse by association; the admissions committee needs to understand what changed in you.

Diversity Secondary Essay Sample #3

Prompt: “Without limiting the discussion to your own identity, please describe how you envision contributing to the core values of diversity and inclusion at our School of Medicine, and in the medical profession.” (1500 characters)

During my junior year of college, I participated in a workshop on unconscious bias in healthcare, offered by my volunteer work at a community health clinic. I learned and observed firsthand the disparities in the quality of care provided to patients of color, from misdiagnoses to downright dismissals. These experiences illuminated the pervasive nature of unconscious biases and their detrimental effects on patients who were not getting appropriate care.

I envision hosting workshops focused on recognizing and mitigating unconscious bias in medicine. These workshops would foster a deeper understanding of how these biases influence patient care and to provide practical strategies for addressing them. By creating a comprehensive workshop series, I aim to cultivate an environment where my peers are better equipped to deliver equitable and compassionate care to all patients, regardless of their background.

Furthermore, I will advocate for the integration of unconscious bias training into the medical school curriculum, ensuring that every student is equipped with the knowledge and tools to provide equitable care.

As a future physician, I am committed to being a vocal advocate for diversity and inclusion within the medical profession. I aim to influence positive change by setting an example for others to follow and by promoting these values. My goal is to contribute to a more equitable healthcare system that serves all patients with dignity and respect, regardless of their background. (1,497 characters)

What this sample does well: This sample answers a contribution-style prompt rather than a simple background question. The applicant identifies a formative experience with bias in health care and then explains a concrete way they hope to contribute to diversity and inclusion during medical training.

What to learn from it: Your conclusion should match the prompt. If the school asks what you will contribute, move beyond describing what you have experienced and explain what you intend to do with the perspective or knowledge you gained.

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